[HN Gopher] Being Raised by the Internet
___________________________________________________________________
Being Raised by the Internet
Author : DamonHD
Score : 383 points
Date : 2024-09-25 12:39 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (jimmyhmiller.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (jimmyhmiller.github.io)
| DamonHD wrote:
| Hey, it seems that we helped! B^>
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| I grew up in a rural part of the United States. First got online
| in 1996 when I was 8 years old. The best thing that the Internet
| gave me was a way to talk to strangers from around the world and
| make friends with people who I would have never had a chance to
| interact with in person. In my 20s, it lead to real life
| friendships with people I had met online, which is really cool. I
| have used Couch Surfing to make friends in places I was traveling
| through. Lived in Australia for a while with a group of friends I
| met online.
| stavros wrote:
| 20 years later, some of my closest friends are those I met in
| 97 in a MUD. I have other friends, of course, but it's notable
| that friendships have endured entirely online for twenty years.
|
| Some of those friends I've talked to every day, or every few
| days, for decades, but I've only seen once or twice IRL.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Online friendships can be more durable than in-person ones.
| They aren't affected by physical changes and moves.
| stavros wrote:
| Yeah, they kind of start in the worst failure mode a
| friendship can have.
| therein wrote:
| I played non-Steam CS in early 2000s and made friends there
| in a foreign country. Years later added to Steam, and
| continued staying in close contact. A decade later we both
| ended up at the West Coast and still chat daily to this day.
|
| We even worked on projects and started some companies along
| the way.
| matsemann wrote:
| I also grew up in a rural town, in Norway. I think internet
| made me more of a "world citizen", empathic to all kinds of
| people, than I would have been without. A small town can be
| quite unwelcome to those not like us.
|
| But I wonder if some of that is lost now to those being "raised
| on the internet"? That things are too big. There were small
| forums, behave, as you know the avatars of everyone and they
| become your friends in a way. But on reddit, everyone is just
| faceless, I will never chat with the same person there again.
| So no sense of community, don't learn to feel empathy for
| others in the same way.
|
| I also wonder how my choice of games affected this. Playing
| WoW, you had to behave, get friends, join a guild, and spent
| time with those. I got friends I've visited in other countries,
| and learned much about life elsewhere through this. But my irl
| friends playing FPS shooting games on xbox live? Mostly
| swearing and trash talk, never to see the players again after
| getting a new random pairing.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Good point. I also made friends on an RPG, Phantasy Star
| Online, and was active on a fan board. The message boards I
| posted on were in the thousands of users, so everyone knew
| everyone and I didn't want a poor reputation.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| The writer of the article was poor when young but at some point
| got internet working on an old computer and suddenly they would
| have access to learn a lot about information technology, thanks
| to mostly freely shared info. What I wonder... would they have
| reached out back then not just for computer info but also for
| psychological support and a way out of poverty, would that have
| worked? And why didn't they?
| dbalatero wrote:
| It sounds like computers were an outlet away from the hardship
| - something the author could sink into. I didn't get the sense
| he was in practical problem solving mode, but more coping and
| survival mode. Lucky him that this particular form of coping
| led to greener pastures.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| He seemed indeed in survival mode. It's indeed unfortunate
| that in such situations, people, especially minors, cannot
| find to reach out for a practical solution for, for example,
| cheap food (leftovers in shops?) or good advice in such
| situation.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Here in the Netherlands we have the Kindertelefoon
| (Children's Telephone), a free hotline for children to call
| and talk about anything. [1] I never called when I was
| young, but I think it's great that such an initiative
| exists.
|
| Even for adults, there are such initiatives, such as the
| Luisterlijn [2] and MIND Korrelatie [3].
|
| [1] https://www.kindertelefoon.nl/
|
| [2] https://www.deluisterlijn.nl/
|
| [3] https://mindkorrelatie.nl/
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I really can't imagine these kind of initiatives not to
| exist on the other side of the ocean. From all i read
| here, i must assume so though.
| throwanem wrote:
| There is nothing remotely similar.
|
| Have you noticed it's only in our cities you seem to
| really hear about the homeless poor? It isn't the
| corollary of overall population distribution that it
| might intuitively look like.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I just read following are available throughout the entire
| USA so I guess there is some hope?
|
| Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline. This hotline
| provides 24/7 support for children and adults concerned
| about child abuse.
|
| National Runaway Safeline (1-800-RUNAWAY)
|
| Boys Town National Hotline (1-800-448-3000).
| throwanem wrote:
| Oh, I didn't say we have nothing that we could call a
| system, just that there's nothing remotely similar. There
| are some people that some of those don't fail, and one on
| that list with so pervasive a documented history of child
| sexual abuse among its caretakers that I'm honestly
| shocked if they still answer the phone - although if I
| recall correctly, Boys Town also has a history for giving
| kickbacks to judges in exchange for remanding children
| whose unpaid labor the organization then can exploit, so
| I suppose it's worth some money to them to take the
| calls. I might misremember, though; there are so many
| such stories, it's hard to keep them straight without
| checking. Churches also answer much of what need anyone
| does, most places this being small, poorly resourced
| local evangelical congregations. These also, in the form
| of the revelations around the conduct of the Southern
| Baptist Convention, have this year seen the breaking of a
| major child sex abuse scandal which has not yet ceased to
| ramify. There is no general oversight or coordination
| anywhere, and for entry into "the system" to result even
| in safe, much less beneficial, placement, is much more
| than anything else a matter of chance. And you only hear
| about homeless poor as a city problem because those who
| can't make it to a city typically end up imprisoned or
| dead.
|
| I was being a little hard on you earlier, maybe. If I'd
| lived a life in the environment of a northern/western-
| European style system of social welfare, it would also I
| think be easy for me to see something in America that
| looks vaguely similar and assume it must be much the
| same.
|
| I took that as a rather arrogant sort of assumption, and
| might in that have earned the accusation of incharity
| that I earlier criticized. Specifically, I think I might
| have failed to account for how, to someone raised in a
| country that looks after its people, the situation in
| America might seem far too grim to easily credit. If I
| did make that error, I apologize.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _Have you noticed it 's only in our cities you seem to
| really hear about the homeless poor? It isn't the
| correlate of overall population distribution that it
| might intuitively look like._
|
| I don't see that claim anywhere in this comment chain
| though?
| throwanem wrote:
| You keep reading me as if I mean to nitpick word by word
| and line by line. Please don't. I'm addressing the same
| questions the article does, and participating in the
| conversation to that end. Inventing minutiae over which
| to quibble does no one any good.
| hesdeadjim wrote:
| I hope you are aware of your immense luck in life if you think
| a kid in a situation like this has agency of any kind, let
| alone access to resources to help them "escape poverty" as a
| minor.
|
| You know why no-questions asked, free lunch programs for
| everyone are so hugely important for kids suffering from food
| scarcity? Often it's because their shitty parents won't even
| sign forms to get them free lunch.
|
| Please educate yourself in what actual suffering looks like in
| this world.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Biweekly I work freely at an initiative in our city to help
| deliver food to the needy. I believe i know what poverty
| looks like. I'm not sure what this has to do with my
| question, probably it was ill formed, for which i apologize.
| throwanem wrote:
| From how you all use the language, I suspect you and your
| critical interlocutors are speaking across the Atlantic to
| one another. Poverty in Europe looks a lot different from
| poverty in the US. It is not wise to assume much at all
| about one from the other.
|
| You also failed in reading the article to notice that the
| author plainly did derive considerable psychological
| support from improving his skill. This was not explicitly
| stated but was trivially implicit, which I think not only
| for me may add to the sense you more pattern-matched on the
| article than read it.
|
| For myself, I'm much more unfavorably impressed with your
| failure to notice the kid plainly was solving his own
| problems with computers and in life, and deriving from that
| success a stronger sense of personal agency which helped
| him approach the larger tasks that faced him.
|
| It seems to me only a view of poverty which is
| paternalistic unto contempt could fail to attend this
| process which _was_ explicitly described in the article,
| but then I am an American, and would not wish to risk
| commenting on a culture I don 't understand well enough to
| form opinions about.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Like i wrote, the question was probably ill formed, but
| it is a question, not an opinion nonetheless.
|
| I am a bit touched that it seemed like i did not read or
| understand the article, in fact i read the article in its
| entirety, as one of the first to comment, even to my
| surprise for such a compelling story. I understood he was
| getting support and feeling strengthened by his learning
| on the internet. I feel my questions seem to be taken as
| rhetorical. I feel it is still unanswered, even no hints
| towards how or why, only that 'i should not ask such
| questions'. I guess American culture is very different
| from European (can it even be seen as having a culture as
| a whole, there is so much diversity)... and hence my
| question not being appreciated?
| throwanem wrote:
| Your reading comprehension is being interrogated because,
| in speaking of the article as though it did not say
| several of the things it says, you make such questions
| seem necessary.
|
| You are being told that the question you asked is "not
| even wrong": it is without meaning and so not
| meaningfully answerable, because it could only be asked
| at all from such a fundamental ignorance of the American
| situation around poverty that to attempt to even explain
| the misapprehension would require more the scope of an
| undergraduate course than an HN comment.
|
| I would not usually be so blunt, but in this case meeting
| an apparent need for directness seems worth the risk of a
| rude impression. If you need it put still more plainly,
| though, I'm afraid I cannot help you.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Thanks
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _in speaking of the article as though it did not say
| several of the things it says, you make such questions
| seem necessary._
|
| What specifically does it say that is being ignored? That
| the author happened to find things he hadn't gone looking
| for directly?
|
| > _fundamental ignorance of the American situation around
| poverty_
|
| Are you claiming that terrible parents are uniquely
| American, in a way that is incapable of being explained
| to outsiders?
| throwanem wrote:
| The idea that this man's past situation can reduce to
| "terrible parents" even as passing reference, is a better
| example than I could ever invent of why this conversation
| will end fruitlessly for you.
|
| It isn't that I don't see the obvious and honest effort
| you're putting into trying to have it. I respect that.
| The problem still is, though, that you don't see the
| entire world of social support structures that have been
| so ever-present for you throughout your life that you're
| unable in any real way to imagine what a life in their
| total absence even looks like. And if that sounds like a
| description of a chicken/egg problem, that's because it
| is one.
|
| For you maybe this is the first time trying to talk
| across that divide. For someone like me, it's usually
| anything but. It's hard to fairly blame us for getting to
| learn some idea of how that usually goes.
|
| (That's why, for example, I know I'm probably coming off
| pretty harsh with this and am deliberately doing so
| anyway; if I tried to go easier, we'd just take longer to
| still end up in the same place.)
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _You also failed in reading the article to notice that
| the author plainly did derive considerable psychological
| support from improving his skill. This was not explicitly
| stated but was trivially implicit_
|
| There's a difference between _happening to find_
| psychological support in something, vs _asking for it
| directly_. I assumed the comment you 're trashing was
| asking about why they didn't do the second and only the
| first.
|
| > _For myself, I 'm much more unfavorably impressed with
| your failure to notice the kid plainly was solving his
| own problems with computers and in life, and deriving
| from that success a stronger sense of personal agency
| which helped him approach the larger tasks that faced
| him._
|
| So what you're saying is that it's a great personal
| failing to wonder why he relied on this happenstance
| rather than looking for those things directly.
|
| > _It seems to me only a view of poverty which is
| paternalistic unto contempt could fail to attend this
| process which was explicitly described in the article,
| but then I am an American, and would not wish to risk
| commenting on a culture I don 't understand well enough
| to form opinions about._
|
| You are showing utter contempt for someone who understood
| a described situation differently due to what you assert
| must me incurable ignorance borne of living in a society
| not your own. This seems rather different from refusing
| to comment on other cultures that you claim to not
| understand.
| throwanem wrote:
| You demonstrate very well the same incharity with which
| you intend to argue I've read and spoken.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| In fact this is the gist of what i wanted to reply, but i
| feel we were cross-talking anyways...
| hesdeadjim wrote:
| I live in a wealthy area in the US, we have many food banks
| and social support services, and _still_ there are huge
| numbers of kids suffering from food scarcity. It always
| comes back to the parents. Even delivering food requires
| said parents to give a shit, which they don't --- whether
| out of pride or sociopathic disdain.
|
| My state is one a handful that provides free lunches and
| morning snacks to all kids, regardless of parent incomes.
| It's essential for these children.
|
| You are still conflating your experience volunteering with
| full knowledge of the problem.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I don't have full knowledge of the problem. Hence the
| questions. It's a pitty i only get answers in the sense
| of "you don't know what you are talking/questioning
| about".
| Eumenes wrote:
| Your entire comment is strange and snarky but this stuck out:
|
| > You know why no-questions asked, free lunch programs for
| everyone are so hugely important for kids suffering from food
| scarcity? Often it's because their shitty parents won't even
| sign forms to get them free lunch.
|
| So its no questions asked but "shitty parents" still have to
| sign forms? Most states with reduced/free lunch programs have
| income thresholds. Regardless, if you let your kid eat that
| crap, you're a "shitty parent", because its literally choked
| full of sodium and fake ingredients. If I lived in one of
| those states, I'd be asking for my lunch voucher in cash to
| go towards real food.
| BryantD wrote:
| Indeed. People tend to reflexively assume that income
| thresholds are a good idea because it prevents people who
| don't need the program from benefitting, but you've got to
| think about the cost to the kids whose parents won't do
| that particular piece of paperwork. Just give kids food if
| they say they need it. You'll also save money on
| bureaucracy.
|
| This is a separate question from the quality of the food. I
| will note that if you give out cash instead of vouchers you
| are giving the kid something that others can and will take
| away from them.
| Yawrehto wrote:
| I think what they meant was that if there are eligibility
| requirements and such, paperwork is required and some
| parents won't do it. So no questions asked solves that
| problem. That's how I parsed it, at least.
| Dansvidania wrote:
| while it might have been theoretically possible.. it's not
| obvious to me that a kid growing up poor would know of that
| possibility, or know how to find that information.
|
| Sometimes it's a matter of luck, like how he had met someone
| that knew about linux.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _What I wonder... would they have reached out back then not
| just for computer info but also for psychological support and a
| way out of poverty, would that have worked?_
|
| Joining someone in their hobbies is a much _much_ smaller ask
| than having that same someone listen to (and maybe advise
| about) your problems, or having them provide career coaching /
| direct financial support.
|
| One is "lets have fun together", the other is "please stranger,
| do me this huge favor".
|
| > _And why didn 't they?_
|
| Knowing _who_ to ask might be a bit much to ask of a kid. Even
| aside from asking for unreciprocated favors being generally not
| a thing most people do easily (or look on favorably).
| anthk wrote:
| Kinda like me modulo the internet, I relied on Debian Sarge docs
| at 17-18, self taught. The DVD and the accompanying book/magazine
| was more than enough to deeping your knowledge.
|
| Also, no project it's pointless. A Gopher/Gemini client in JimTCL
| with a basic cli interface a la cgo/gplaces? Go for it. A simple
| IRC client with a simple thread in the backgroup looking up for
| PING messages from the server ? The same. It wont be a killer
| application, but it wll be fun and you will learn a lot.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| This is not being raised by the internet. Being raised by the
| internet is getting all your mores and morals from the internet.
| Learning how to do everything you know through YouTube videos.
| Learning appropriate responses to situations through forums etc.
| A lot of us are raised by the internet.
| arp242 wrote:
| This is being needlessly pedantic over a somewhat poetic usage
| of "raised" in the title.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Indeed, I'd thought the title was deliberately ambiguous
| between raised ("upbringing") and raised ("uplifted").
| throwanem wrote:
| The author seems about a decade younger than me and "raised"
| isn't the word I would use for myself, but I doubt I would have
| made it if not for the friends I made and the things I learned
| that way.
|
| The thing about pulling yourself up out of a bad situation is
| that you learn to be usually very deliberate in how you talk
| about it and what you talk about. People who've never really
| known anything but stability in their lives tend to make a lot of
| assumptions they're not equipped to recognize, so it's usually
| just better not to create the opportunity.
|
| If you feel you've noticed an odd ellipticality in accounts like
| these, the vague sense of something going unsaid, it's this. If
| that's _all_ you 've noticed, better not to pry.
| ehnto wrote:
| Well said, something I had not yet put to words.
|
| It came up on HN recently, about how work is a place where it
| can be best to leave some things unsaid, because it invites
| assumptions about your character and capabilities that might
| not be true, or positive.
| ghaff wrote:
| Any quasi-public forum it's probably best to leave
| controversial and nuanced opinions on things unsaid
| especially under your real name. (But even under a supposedly
| anonymous handle, it's probably worth asking if you really
| need to post this.)
| throwanem wrote:
| That isn't even unreasonable as a cultural norm, although it
| is that those who most firmly enforce it also cherish silly
| habits like saying "bring your whole self to work."
|
| The expectation of not oversharing needs to be met by a
| commitment of not over- _asking,_ but I suppose that 's
| really too much to expect in an age so degraded that all the
| obligations across lines of social class are understood to
| run in only one direction.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| I once heard, in a different century, that the "modal
| restaurant script" differed between the US and the UK in
| that in the former, the waitstaff asks the diners a bunch
| of (to a cultural outsider) overly prying questions, while
| in the latter, the diners ask them of the waitstaff. Still
| true? Never was?
| Fuzzwah wrote:
| Australian who has spent time living in the US: yes, the
| difference is still true today between how waiters at an
| Australian restaurant and servers at a US restaurant
| interact with customers.
|
| Waiters wait. If you need anything you make eye contact
| and they come over.
|
| Servers are overly friendly and will interrupt
| conversations to ask if the food is up to standard, etc.
|
| I've always thought it was due to tipping. Servers need
| to be active and show they're being attentive in order to
| get tips.
| theshackleford wrote:
| > I've always thought it was due to tipping
|
| I've been bothered far more by wait staff in Australia
| than I ever have in the US. Must be down to the location
| and the restaurant.
| throwanem wrote:
| > Servers are overly friendly and will interrupt
| conversations to ask if the food is up to standard, etc.
|
| The median American in any restaurant with chairs not
| bolted to the floor can be assumed to operate on roughly
| the level of a marginally clever, but ill-parented and
| intemperate, four- or five-year-old child. Even nice
| places have to deal with this, because neither the child
| nor the American recognizes any such distinction.
|
| The waitstaff need you to convince them they won't deal
| with this with _you,_ which you can quickly and easily do
| by dressing appropriately - I know, but an American would
| need to be told - and comporting yourself in the correct
| fashion you described. A place worth eating at will
| recognize this and leave you pretty much in peace
| thereafter.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Hmm, not certain about wait staff. I'm certain that
| barbers do it everywhere I've ever been though.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _The expectation of not oversharing needs to be met by a
| commitment of not over-asking,_
|
| Nosy people are a fact of life, and their existence
| shouldn't invalidate norms against over-sharing in
| inappropriate contexts.
| throwanem wrote:
| I haven't sought to argue either should override the
| other, but indeed exactly that both should exist in more
| balance than has lately been evident.
| yapyap wrote:
| you can just... lie
| cxr wrote:
| Some people are against that, even if only for purely
| pragmatic (as opposed to moral) reasons. This is another
| one of those "People who've never really known
| [otherwise] tend to make a lot of assumptions they're not
| equipped to recognize" things; being in a fortunate
| enough position to absorb the potential blowback of a lie
| is not unlike the privilege of being in a position to
| absorb the blowback to any other choice/decision that
| carries some risk that that seems minor to the average
| person but is potentially disastrous to someone who can't
| absorb it.
|
| (And then there are moral reasons, too.)
| throwanem wrote:
| And then there's you have to keep track of the lies, and
| that most people prefer to think of themselves as not the
| kind of person who would ever, ever gossip - which isn't
| the same as saying they don't.
|
| The moral consideration carries real weight, as you note;
| lying in a survival situation is one thing, but this kind
| of problem relatively rarely that standard. But even if
| the moral iniquity and hazard is entirely ignored, the
| policy as a practical matter simply cannot work for long.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Keep your identity small.
| https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
|
| (Not saying I agree or disagree with the essay but it seemed
| topical)
| Etheryte wrote:
| I think the central takeaway of this essay is dead wrong,
| you should aim for the exact opposite. The fewer labels or
| identities you have yourself, the more strongly you hold on
| to them and the more fragile your personality. If the only
| thing you identify yourself by is your job and that gets
| taken away from you in a downturn, never to return, what's
| left? A lot of people who are in that situation and don't
| have other selves to identify with struggle strongly. On
| the other hand, people who identify with more facets of
| what makes them them have a lot of options to fall back on.
| You're not only your job, but you're also a parent, a
| child, an athlete, a hobbyist, etc. Even if you stop being
| one of those things, you keep being all the rest, and that
| gives fortitude and resilience.
| throwanem wrote:
| In this connection it seems fit to note that "I am
| someone who found ways to overcome the problems that I
| faced" is also a statement of identity.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| If your self-image includes the structure of the world
| around you, or the behavior of people other than
| yourself, you'll run into problems.
|
| I enjoy working with computers. I happen to work at a
| particular company doing computer things. Only one of
| those is an innate "what makes me, _me_ " thing. Even if
| computers didn't exist, I'd still probably tend to
| gravitate towards things that are fun for the same sorts
| of reasons.
| lll-o-lll wrote:
| And if you hit a physical or health issue that takes that
| away, or dramatically reduces the amount of time you can
| spend on it?
|
| This isn't hypothetical; I have worked with people who've
| had to quit this form of work for the following reasons:
| Carpal tunnel that prevented using keyboard and mouse,
| brain injury, neck injury that made it impossible to sit
| at a computer (or desk), long Covid and "brain fog". I
| imagine that vision impairment might lead to the same.
|
| If any of these were to happen to me, would I still have
| my sense of self? Are we more than our love of
| technology?
| malfist wrote:
| This is way off in a tangent but that's kinda why I think
| a UBI won't lead to mass unemployment. So many people
| self identify with their work that it's almost always the
| first question when you're getting to know someone.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Says the guy who gets into culture war arguments online all
| the time
| tbrownaw wrote:
| People with different life experiences should just be quietly
| written off due to the faulty assumptions they might make out
| of ignorance.
|
| > _If you feel you 've noticed an odd ellipticality in accounts
| like these, the vague sense of something going unsaid, it's
| this. If that's all you've noticed, better not to pry._
|
| In what context? Work acquaintances chatting over coffee at the
| office? Parasocial public discussions on the internet?
| _Intentionally_ public discussions? Friends talking all night
| over drinks?
| throwanem wrote:
| You give the impression here of having taken something I said
| quite personally. I hope I may be forgiven for not yet really
| understanding what or why. Likewise, my responses may be
| somewhat less on point for the distraction.
|
| The account under discussion is attributed public speech on
| the Internet. In other contexts, other conventions apply.
| There are about as many such contexts as there are kinds of
| relationships between humans. That's about as general as I
| can really make it.
|
| If you're asking for a recommendation, it would be twofold.
| First, if a question seems like it might be taken as nosy,
| try to find a way to reframe it, or don't ask it at all.
| Second, when someone seems to persistently misunderstand
| something you're saying or asking in a more personal than
| professional context, consider that they may be intentionally
| deflecting a question or subject which they consider
| inappropriate to address in that setting.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| The bit I quoted seemed to be saying that curiosity and
| wanting to understand things are bad.
|
| Maybe that can be _off topic_ and so out of place at work,
| but in online arguments prompted by something intentionally
| made public?
| throwanem wrote:
| I'm talking about behavior. What motivates that behavior
| isn't relevant.
|
| A nosy question is nosy because it demands an answer to
| which the querent is not entitled. Whether that undue
| desire is motivated by curiosity, prurience, arrogance,
| pity, or simple fascination - and I have seen all of
| these, sometimes in combination - has no bearing on the
| effect of the question on the one so asked. The vice
| inheres in the asking, because that forces the choice
| between refusing to answer and arousing the ire of jilted
| entitlement, and giving you an answer you have already
| done much to suggest you are not prepared to understand.
|
| Within acceptable error, everyone who ever tries to have
| this conversation from your side proceeds from here to
| umbrage at the idea their behavior within it is in any
| way either predictable or discreditable, owing to the
| purity of their intentions.
| bcoates wrote:
| Yes, it's bad. Learn to mind your own business. If you
| don't understand, you are failing the test.
| Aeolun wrote:
| So what you are saying is that people have some hangup on
| saying 'I don't want to say' and instead say all kinds of
| vague stuff that I might want to clarify, and that I
| should recognize that and just let it go?
|
| I'm not quite sure how to distinguish that from people
| unintentionally being vague.
| throwanem wrote:
| Not everyone takes "I don't want to talk about that"
| easily. The '...with you' is always implicit, and a weak
| ego easily takes insult at that. If that weak ego belongs
| to someone who signs your paychecks, now you have a
| problem.
| throwanem wrote:
| I get it, but we both know this doesn't help.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| And now it is even worse. Kids left for hours in front of a TV or
| tablet watching 30 different versions of baby shark.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Back in the 80s kids were left for hours in front of a TV
| watching cartoons. I suspect this was the case even earlier
| that that too.
| earnesti wrote:
| Some kids were, some kids weren't. I don't know how I ended
| up hacking with Linux and programming, while many others
| spent their time watching series and playing Nintendo. Not to
| say it is somehow a bad thing.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| 80s cartoons were better than regular YouTube on autoplay.
| Which is a Russian roulette of inappropiate content.
|
| YouTube Kids is better in this respect, but more recent.
| earnesti wrote:
| To be fair this viewpoint should be included as well talking
| about being raised by the internet. People can have so very
| different experiences with the computers.
| aantix wrote:
| My kids get a fair share of unsupervised tablet time.
|
| And they seem to know 10x of what I did at their same age.
|
| My son is 9, watching endless Geometry Dash tutorials, and
| making his own levels. He loves it, and he loves to show me his
| work.
|
| Tablet time will become an extension of your home life.
|
| If you have good discussions - encouraging curiosity, fostering
| creativity, challenging their approach "Why did you design it
| this way?" - the kid and the algorithms will follow that lead.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Kids know more pokemons than the animals they are based on.
|
| They can to take care of Talking Tom or some other virtual
| pet but ignore their own pets.
| SirHumphrey wrote:
| I sometimes wonder how much of a difference being raised on
| PC-s vs phones or tablets is there.
|
| I am young enough that when I grew up phones started to become
| mainstream, and anecdotally people that started using PC-s
| before phones developed greater interest in technology later
| on.
|
| In a way computers allow you to break stuff and learn how to
| fix it. Phones put you in a sandbox with a hose of internet
| content.
| dhempsy wrote:
| It's fascinating how someone can feel like they've been "raised
| by the internet," almost as if it's a parent in this digital age.
| I'm curious to learn more about how that experience shapes a
| person!
| kiba wrote:
| The internet is important in my formative year, taught me a
| lot, including how to program. You could say that my intellect
| is formed by the internet firehose.
|
| I would like to say that my experience is largely positive, but
| it's hard to say that without the internet, I would actually be
| more capable. There are many things that the internet does
| well, but building young adults able to deftly navigate the
| real world is not one of them.
|
| That said, the internet once again is now a source of
| information on how to be a responsible adults. However, there's
| no doubt that the internet is also a source of toxic
| information without good judgement and ruthless filtering.
| mid-kid wrote:
| It's said in the same way as how the environment you grow up in
| shapes who you become, the internet being (one of) your primary
| environment(s) due to escapism or just amount of time spent in
| it.
| t-3 wrote:
| I had way more conversations with random people on internet
| forums, IRC, etc. than my parents while growing up, and learned
| orders of magnitude more from those interactions... but they
| didn't feed, clothe, or house me so I would never claim I was
| raised by the 'net.
| HPsquared wrote:
| We are going to see a lot of children (and adults) raised by
| chatbots. Asking them for advice, confiding in them where real
| people don't seem safe, etc. Through the looking glass! Still,
| definitely better than asking Reddit for relationship advice
| doubled112 wrote:
| Red flags galore. You should divorce immediately. Not the
| asshole.
|
| I do fear, in the long term, what happens to those chat logs?
|
| Surely they will be used for training later on, and being
| anonymous doesn't always work out.
|
| Will the viewer be more AI bots? Human employees? Law
| enforcement? A dump on 4chan?
| kragen wrote:
| not just training; they'll be used for background checks and
| targeted assassinations
| tbrownaw wrote:
| What if I told you those chatbots are trained on Reddit?
| yapyap wrote:
| Rough seas ahead, thats for sure
| benreesman wrote:
| I faced nothing like the hardships the author did, but I'm
| nonetheless deeply indebted to people who took a young Linux nerd
| with an upbringing that was "no fun" under their wing and ignited
| a lifelong passion that became a very interesting career and a
| very interesting life.
|
| So I'd like to add my gratitude to that of the OP to the
| wonderful mentors I've had over the years. I don't see eye-to-eye
| with all of them in 2024, but that in no way diminishes the
| tremendous debt of gratitude.
|
| This is the kind of debt that's paid forward: when and where I
| can I try to pass some of this treasure along to younger hackers.
|
| Thank you for a moving personal story @jimmyhmiller.
| tightbookkeeper wrote:
| Of course nothing on the internet is new, it just assumes a
| default culture and philosophy which is less prominent in real
| life. It would be interesting to pin early internet to a
| particular demographic. Is it 90s stem graduate students
| primarily in the US? Middle class engineers?
| throwanem wrote:
| I would instead say, as many have, that the entire wonder of
| the young Internet was that it _couldn 't_ be tied to just one
| demographic.
| tightbookkeeper wrote:
| I just don't think that's true. The sampling of early
| internet users and writers is not the general population.
| throwanem wrote:
| Nor did I say that it was. You've assumed an equation
| between "not just one demographic" and "the general
| population" where none exists.
|
| There are histories in my bookshelf downstairs that I can
| recommend here. If I don't happen by before the edit window
| closes on this comment, I'll mention some titles in a
| reply.
| tightbookkeeper wrote:
| And with this black and white thinking you won't find any
| trends or patterns anywhere in real life.
|
| To rephrase the question, who was influential on the
| internet? What biases and ideals were on the internet due
| to those selection effects.
|
| For example, the internet was very secular and perhaps
| nihilistic. Where does that come from.
| throwanem wrote:
| It is a remarkable reading of my comment, in which I
| identify where black-and-white thinking has led your
| analysis into error, that can mistake that criticism for
| the error it describes.
|
| It really isn't a simple question you're asking, is the
| problem. If I thought it needed less than a book to
| answer, why would I be about to recommend books?
| tightbookkeeper wrote:
| I think the response was an uncharitable reading of my
| comment. Obviously you get 10 people together and you
| have all kinds of demographics even in the same
| neighborhood. The question is about which of many are
| dominant, or which are simply missing. I didn't think
| that needed to be said.
|
| > It really isn't a simple question you're asking,
|
| I agree. I apologize for miscommunication and if you have
| any books to share please do.
| throwanem wrote:
| It needed to be said because that question makes no sense
| in the situation of which you ask it. That any
| demographic or mix of same would necessarily be
| "dominant" in the context of early Internet culture,
| indeed even the unitary integrity the phrase "early
| Internet culture" grammatically implies, is an
| assumption. As long as you keep that, no history I can
| recommend is going to help you, because read with that
| assumption they will also make no sense. (I'll still
| recommend them, of course; just that I don't see them
| doing you any good this way.)
|
| The scare quotes are because I honestly do not understand
| what you mean by that term here; I think you and I might
| be speaking across an ocean, too.
| krapp wrote:
| We have to differentiate between the "young Internet" that
| existed before Eternal September and the internet that
| existed afterwards, which is just "young" relative to most
| current users.
|
| The former was definitely an elite monoculture composed of
| primarily young, white, nerdy American college students and
| faculty. It would be correct to say internet culture, for
| better or worse, comprised the common interests and
| affectations of that culture.
| throwanem wrote:
| Yes, that's true. After "Eternal September" the Internet
| for the first time had real cultural relevance, and this is
| important to take into account.
| District5524 wrote:
| The earlier you go, the easier it is to pinpoint a single
| demographic (although not sure what's the point in doing that).
| But from '95 on, I'd say it's pretty misleading to point that
| to US or middle class engineers. Even in 95, it was already
| available to non-ranked university students in peripheric
| countries, and not just for those studying at engineering
| faculties. Although most web content at that time was related
| to porn (90%) and jokes (9%) and some other content (1% -
| probably stem and engineering?), but I don't know exactly in
| what philosophy that content is considered prominent and
| default. From 2000, it was accessible and even not too
| expensive for most middle class households by landline. From
| that time on, it was more about which demographic is not yet
| present... I think you had to wait e.g., another 10-12 years
| for mobile-first minors and for the idle retired people.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _It would be interesting to pin early internet to a
| particular demographic._
|
| Well, what counts as "early"?
|
| This says that fully half of US adults were online by y2k:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-bro...
|
| This is titled "Profile of computer owners in the 1990s" with
| data points for 1990 and 1997:
| https://www.bls.gov/mlr/1999/04/atissue.pdf
| topaz0 wrote:
| ndiswrapper was a big learning moment for me as well
| Fokamul wrote:
| Wild guess, Alabama?
| kragen wrote:
| > _I am certain they never intended to inspire a 12 year-old kid
| to find a better life._
|
| i can't speak for everyone, but as one of the people writing
| tutorials and faqs and helping people learn to do things with
| free software during the period miller is talking about, that is
| _absolutely_ what i intended to do. and, from the number of
| people i knew who were excited to work on olpc, _conectar
| igualdad_ , and huayra linux, i think it was actually a pretty
| common motivation
|
| as a kid on bbses, fidonet, and the internet, i benefited to an
| unimaginable degree from other people's generosity in sharing
| their learning and their inventions (which is what software is).
| how could i not want to do the same?
|
| underwritten by the nsf, the internet was a gift economy, like
| burning man: people giving away things of value to all comers
| because if you don't do that maybe it's because you can't. the
| good parts of it still are
| lukan wrote:
| "the internet was a gift economy, like burning man: people
| giving away things of value to all comers because if you don't
| do that maybe it's because you can't. the good parts of it
| still are"
|
| But it feels like more and more are taken over by money from
| advertisement. It is allways a relieve to me, find a site in
| the old spirit.
| fsflover wrote:
| > It is allways a relieve to me, find a site in the old
| spirit.
|
| Here is the corresponding search engine for that:
| https://wiby.me
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Also: https://search.marginalia.nu
| malfist wrote:
| Kagi has a small web thing too. But very few of those
| places are a community
| kragen wrote:
| kagi is explicitly not a community; it's a service you
| pay for
| orcim wrote:
| Many have definitely been motivated by the wish to share
| information. But there also wasn't much of an alternative. If
| you wanted to actively learn something, get someone else to use
| it, or get them to share what they knew, you almost had to
| interact with others. Which doesn't mean there wasn't a genuine
| want to help others. But it was also wanting what you shared to
| become better. Something that was a direct consequence of many
| of us having experienced a scarcity of computers, software, and
| information. And then experiencing network effects.
|
| That still exists in some ways. But much of the Internet is
| very much being gatekept. Including YouTube, Wikipedia, GitHub,
| Reddit, and Hacker News. There is almost no point in posting
| things publicly anymore because not only is the average user
| not genuinely interested, but they are genuinely not
| interested. That is why kids grow up with TikTok. Because it is
| one of the few platforms where you can post on almost the same
| terms as you consume. And thereby experience those network
| effects.
|
| I've ended up enough times on the Raspberry Pi forum to
| understand why anyone young today would not want to go into
| computer science or electrical engineering.
| kragen wrote:
| i mean, you could totally solve a problem yourself and not
| write it up. i did that lots of times too!
|
| it'll be interesting to see what happens with llms and things
| like stack exchange
| pityJuke wrote:
| I'm glad this author had an endearing experience.
|
| I can't say that I did. I'd blame "being raised on the internet"
| as a consistent contributor to a lot of negatives in my life.
| Certainly, I picked up a lot of the rage from people in the IRC
| circles I ran with, and like a parrot exhibited it in my personal
| life. Beyond that, the general degradation of IRL social skills.
|
| I can say my life took a significant upturn once I extricated
| myself from that community.
|
| I'd say the thing is that the internet is filled with a lot of
| negative places, filled with people who literally can't operate
| IRL. If as a kid you're sucked into them, it can be detrimental.
| toastau wrote:
| There are online communities for all kinds of addictive
| activities. They offer perfect validation, and it's easy to
| lose track of how little you're actually doing in the real
| world or how few people you're interacting with face-to-face.
| Some people stop trying to meet others locally once they find
| their intellectual and emotional peers online. This can go on
| for years, and it's not something I'd recommend.
|
| I interpreted this piece as focusing on how information is
| being made more accessible. People are taking complex textbooks
| and university-level knowledge and turning them into
| understandable tutorials and examples. Anyone who can break
| down and share complicated information has a valuable skill
| that really helps others.
| theshackleford wrote:
| > I can't say that I did. I'd blame "being raised on the
| internet" as a consistent contributor to a lot of negatives in
| my life. Certainly, I picked up a lot of the rage from people
| in the IRC circles I ran with, and like a parrot exhibited it
| in my personal life. Beyond that, the general degradation of
| IRL social skills.
|
| I had an experience far more in line with the article. I grew
| up in extreme poverty, incredible isolation and within a very
| abusive family. So abusive that a big chunk of my childhood was
| spent in dealing with courts and police with eventually an
| apprehended violence order being taken out on my behalf against
| my parents to try and bring an end to the abuse. Extracted from
| the abuse but not the isolation I was headed to a very dark
| place.
|
| The interent was world changing for me once given access. It
| opened the door to another world, to the ability to socialise
| without stigma, learn and grow with people that in comparison
| to what I had experienced, were quite normal and well adjusted
| though of course, not perfect by any means.
|
| My time on it as a youth opened the door to a world that would
| later become my ladder out of that life and the foundation of
| my success as an adult. A ladder I would never had access to
| without the internet. I credit it for effectively having saved
| my life. I would be in a very different place now were it not
| for that exposure and experience. Where most of the people I
| knew as a youth are today, which is not at all a pleasant
| place.
|
| Todays internet is not the same I feel, and that is also not to
| say that it could not instead have been a detrimental place or
| experience for some even then. Perhaps if you have a more
| normal upbringing, one in which you do not face such extremes
| than it may only bring negatives instead of positives, but for
| many, it's a hatch to exposure of things you may otherwise
| never get to experience as others do.
| zero-sharp wrote:
| Yea it was a similar situation for me. I definitely wasn't in
| poverty, but my family was a mess. I mostly hung out in my room
| on the internet and got away from it.
| maxlin wrote:
| Expected something a lot more dark. But this sounds like the best
| thing that would be written under that heading. Probably because
| not too current-day
| tbrownaw wrote:
| The part about why it happened seemed plenty dark.
| AzzyHN wrote:
| For better or worse, I too was raised by the internet and found
| kindness in random strangers. I try and return the favor today,
| in Discord servers and what not
| yapyap wrote:
| cute article, whenever I hear about someone "raised by the
| internet" I usually think of a negative result but glad to hear
| this is a positive one
| joshdavham wrote:
| Agreed. I was expecting to read an article on something "ipad
| kids", but instead found a very inspiring and heart-warming
| article
| fermigier wrote:
| I wasn't raised (as a technologist) by the internet, but by
| cassettes, floppies, magazines and books. But we share at least
| one experience: the horrors of ndiswrapper.
|
| 20 years later, I recently tried to install Ubuntu on an old
| Intel MacBook Pro that I got somehow, and I realized that in 2024
| you still can't install Linux on a laptop (at least, on laptop of
| a certain popular make) without jumping through hoops, due to,
| IIRC, lack of support for the particular Wifi chipset this
| computer uses.
| kiwijamo wrote:
| I find it has improved heaps in recent years. Even Debian (a
| fairly conservative Linux distro) supports Intel wireless chips
| right out of the box and I understand it has support for other
| wireless chips as well. It's gotten to the point sometimes
| Linux has better support out of the box than Windows does!
| Windows for example struggles with USB-C data but works
| perfectly on Linux.
| avg_dev wrote:
| a beautiful post. it's really nice when we get posts like this
| here, just personally i find it very meaningful.
|
| > But sometimes the employees there would give me the employee
| discount, I guess they realized I needed it.
|
| that is such a heart-warming thing.
|
| i would maybe argue the following point in the article:
|
| > People whose work was not aimed at me in the slightest.
|
| idk. i think that part of the point of being open is being open
| to possibilities. obviously no one can see the far-reaching
| consequences of their work when they set out to do it. but
| sometimes, people have hopes, i think, that their openness will
| create possibilities just like this article is describing.
|
| > resources like w3schools,
|
| i remember a long time back - maybe 15 years ago - i would
| occasionally read w3schools, and i had a coworker who would kind
| of turn up their nose at that site, they were kind of a snob
| about it. i knew enough then to realize it wasn't the best site
| for everything but out of insecurity after that person said that,
| i stopped reading it too. but it helped me, too. and i'm glad it
| helped you. i am starting to re-revise my opinion of that site.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Huh this could have been written by me. I am a kid of the
| internet. A place built on altruism.
| LoganDark wrote:
| I was raised by the internet, too. I first started using
| computers at around the age of 5. A lot of my childhood years
| were spent in places that still exist today. My family was poor
| and computers were my only escape, just like the article says.
|
| I can't help but feel like I lost something through doing that,
| though. It certainly didn't help my ADHD to teach my brain that
| it's possible to live life through only instant gratification.
| And it certainly didn't help to always be connected to so many
| people that now I can't seem to do anything alone.
| pushupentry1219 wrote:
| As someone of the younger generation, I think "raised by the
| internet" these days is extremely toxic and non-productive not at
| all what the author here is talking about in this lovely post.
|
| When someone says "I was raised by the internet", I immediately
| think: social media addiction, 4chan and other online
| obscenities. But this is completely based on my own personal
| experience.
|
| My point here is not related to this lovely post at all, it's
| just that I always have associated "raised by the internet" with
| negative connotation.
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